


Life Sucks, And Then

by relightthatspark



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Gen, I don't really know how to tag things, Implied/Referenced Character Death, if there's anything i'm missing that should be tagged please let me know!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29326923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relightthatspark/pseuds/relightthatspark
Summary: Sunset Curve's perspectives on death.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters
Comments: 9
Kudos: 20





	Life Sucks, And Then

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first fanfiction I've ever written. I've been wanting to try it for a while, so this is my first post on Ao3. The idea for this kind of just spontaneously entered my brain, so I decided to write it. Parts of it are based off of personal life experiences.  
> Warning: the main topic of this fic is death, and it is discussed heavily. There are no major details about any specific character death, canon or otherwise. It's just mentioned.
> 
> Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments! I'm still learning how this site works, so any advice or feedback is appreciated (but remember, it's literally my first fanfic ever, so please try to be kind! LOL) 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

* * *

Alex Mercer had been raised Catholic.

Growing up, his parents had always told him, “When people get really old, Alex, they leave this Earth and go to heaven.” 

Death had always seemed like a faraway concept to Alex. He didn’t know what would happen after he passed on, of course. Nobody really did. But he’d always been told not to fear death.   
  
He had been raised on scriptures and prayers, on the false sense of comfort his faith had provided. _Nothing bad will ever happen to you. Nothing you can’t handle. And even when you die, it won’t be a bad thing. You won’t be scared, because you’ll get to be with God._

The message had been clear: you live a long life trying to do the best you can, and you get decades to do it before you’re called onward.

His parents had always accepted that mentality and had encouraged their son to do the same. _God loves you, Alex. As long as you’re good, you’ll get to go to heaven when you die._

Heaven. That magical place where you were always happy, with everything you could ever want. Your “reward” for making it through your decades without screwing up. 

One day, Alex came out to his parents as gay.

And suddenly, all those promises of heaven had turned into threats of hell. 

❖

As the distance between himself and his parents grew, Alex started to fear death a little more. All those promises of “something better beyond this world” no longer seemed to apply to him. 

And if he couldn’t go to heaven when he died, where _would_ he go?  
  
Alex always tried to calm his anxiety about death with the reassurance that he still had so much of his life left to live. His parents had always spoken of death like it was a long way off-- nothing for him to worry about, especially not yet. He was too young. 

❖  
  
He and his three best friends started a band. Sunset Curve. Alex played the drums like his life depended on it. And it did; he had never felt as alive as he had when he was playing music with his friends. His parents might have kicked him out of their family, but he had found a new one in Luke, Reggie, and Bobby.   
Playing with Sunset Curve in Bobby’s garage was where he belonged.   
  
The four of them put everything they had into their music. Whenever Alex doubted his place in the world, he could just look to his side, and one of the boys would be there. They were a family; they loved and defended and fought for each other unconditionally. 

When he’d finally come out to them, at three o’clock on a Monday morning, after having a panic attack and crying for hours straight into Luke’s hoodie, they hadn’t looked at him any differently.  
  
_You’re still Alex, dude. You’re our best friend. We love you. Don’t worry._

His friends had made him feel like maybe heaven could be possible for him again. But spending time with them, talking and laughing and playing music until the sun came up, he’d found that it didn’t matter so much, not in those moments. 

How could death touch him when he felt so _alive_? 

❖

Sunset Curve was playing The Orpheum. After two years of the hardest work they’d ever done. Staying up all night writing songs. Rehearsing. Fine-tuning performances. After hustling, begging, and calling in every favor they had. They’d gotten the gig. It was happening. Everything they’d ever wanted, almost within their grasp. 

Alex felt a million miles away from death; in fact, he felt the most alive he’d ever been. But the high he felt, gearing up to play the biggest show of their lives, had him wondering if he was anywhere near heaven at that moment.

He felt more empowered than ever before as he, Luke, and Reggie toasted their street dogs to the future.

They were gonna be legends.

* * *

Reggie Peters hadn’t had much experience with death growing up. He had a pretty small family to begin with. Just him, his parents, and a grandfather on his mom’s side. 

When he was fifteen, his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. They didn’t think it would be very long, the doctors said. His grandfather should think about getting his affairs in order.  
  
The fights between his parents that had been brought on by his dad’s drinking had doubled with the stress of his grandfather’s medical bills and his mother’s looming grief. More nights than not, Reggie found himself curled up in the corner of his bedroom, his shaking hands pressed against his ears, trying to block out the screaming and crying and sounds of shattering glass.   
  
For Reggie, who’d had nothing else to compare it to, “death” became just another thing for his parents to fight over. It caused distress. It caused heartache. Reggie didn’t like it. He hadn’t known much about death before. But now the reality of it was sinking in: it was an unavoidable menace. 

When death finally came for his grandfather, it was expected. It was considered a relief, because he wasn’t sick anymore. He wasn’t suffering. 

And Reggie was empathetic. He saw, in the weeks following his grandfather’s passing, how much his mother was hurting. He felt the hurt, too. When his father disappeared for days on end, drowning his sorrows in the nearest bottle, Reggie sat with her, and her pain stabbed through his heart like it was his own.   
  
He resolved that his mother had been hurt enough. First by the words his father would shout at her, and most recently by the death of her own father. He decided that he’d never make anybody hurt the way his mother was hurting. He would be the sun in the storm, the eye of the hurricane. The one bright spot when the rest of the world was dark.   
  
If not him, then who? Everybody else in Reggie’s family was succumbing to misery. 

He _had_ to be the happy one.   
  
❖

Being the happy one was hard. In a house that was a constant cacophony of screaming and cursing, Reggie felt himself being sucked into the misery like a speck of dust in a vacuum.   
  
He found himself coming home less and less. He’d spend most nights in Bobby’s garage, tangled up with Luke on the couch. He put everything he had into music, because when his world was quiet, it unsettled him. He grew accustomed to using music to drown out his parents’ screaming and the anxious thoughts it summoned in his own head. 

He wanted the band to make it big. That way, they could travel the world, playing their music, and they could be together. Reggie, Alex, Luke, Bobby. The only family they were ever going to need.   
  
That’s why, when Bobby heard that the Orpheum had an act fall through for a gig coming up in a couple of weeks, the four of them fought harder than they’d ever had for anything in order to book it. The days leading up to getting the call were a blur. And when it came, and Bobby had hung up the landline in his parents’ kitchen and barreled through the garage door screaming his head off, Reggie felt his heart swell with hope, affection, and desperate impatience. 

He could finally let himself be truly happy. He was finally free. His life was about to begin.

* * *

Luke Patterson found that death always showed up when it was least expected. It came and went, not knowing or caring who would be affected after it had gone again. It took and took, and it didn’t ask for permission.

It was unsympathetic; it did not allow for bargaining. It found the best possible people, people who still had so much living to do, and it plucked them away, just because it could. It was unstoppable. 

Almost everyone Luke had known who had died had gone this way. People who had dinner plans for the next night that they never made it to. People who were fine when they woke up in the morning, but no longer on Earth hours later. 

❖

When Luke was ten years old, his best friend’s family got into a car accident. When his parents sat him down and told him that Jenny was no longer with them, he didn’t understand. Where was she? He’d seen her at school only yesterday. She had been fine. 

Luke had learned the hard way what death meant: a person’s body shuts down. Their heart stops. “Is” becomes “was.” Each spontaneous loss in his life gave way to some painful new bit of knowledge. Someone could go to the doctor, get a clean bill of health, and drop dead on the way back to their car. They could have a heart attack while watching T.V. at night, and nobody would find them until the next morning. No matter what someone did, they couldn’t avoid death. Ready or not, it was coming. 

Luke knew this, so he tried his best not to take life for granted. _Live like it’s now or never_ , he’d written years later, because it really was. 

Despite the painful experiences he’d had with sudden death, Luke was not scared of it. As long as he had his music, nothing could hurt him. As long as he had Bobby, Reggie, and Alex, they’d be unstoppable. If death took him, he would make sure to leave a legacy behind. No matter what, he would live on in people’s hearts through his music.

His band would get there one day; he could feel it. They were so close.

Death could not touch them, because he and his boys radiated _life_. 

❖

Sunset Curve was standing in front of the Orpheum Theatre, and it felt like they were on top of the world. 

This was it. Everything they’d been hoping for, now just hours away. Luke was buzzing. 

Death never even crossed his mind that night. He was excited to get on stage, to feel the vibrations under his feet as the crowd roared. Thousands of people would hear their music. This gig would lead to a record deal, an album, a tour. It would lead to fame and fortune, but most importantly, _connection_. Their music would finally _reach_ people. Once Sunset Curve walked off the Orpheum stage, everybody would know who they were. They could share their music with the world, and the world would be listening. They would love it. He’d find the connection that he’d been missing since he left his parents at Christmas. And his parents… they would see that he’d been right all along. He could finally make up with them. He just had to get his band through the biggest performance of their lives. 

Luke felt hungry. Hungry for the future that was right around the corner, but for something else, too. He looked around, taking in the sights and the energy of a night that would go down in history.

Luke noticed a guy selling hot dogs out of the back of his car. 

He could picture himself telling the story to his future kids one day. _On the biggest night of our lives, your uncles and I got hot dogs out of some dude’s trunk. Then, we hit the stage and became famous! It was unbelievable._

❖

Turns out, it was impossible. 

* * *

Death hadn’t given much thought to Bobby Wilson, but it had taken only seconds to completely dismantle his life. It was relentless. 

It had taken everything from him and left him an empty shell. Like a Russian matryoshka doll, whose inner layers had been opened up and discarded onto the floor, where they’d shattered into a million pieces. 

The band of best friends; legends in the making, now a solo act. 

That’s all Bobby knew about death. It had broken him. He was irreparable.

* * *

  
It turned out that Trevor Wilson would not have to worry about death for quite a while.


End file.
